Mudlarks?

London's Mudlarks Retrieve History From the Thames
By REUTERS
Published: March 2, 2011

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - It's seven in the morning and we kneel in black mud on the freezing banks of London's River Thames in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral, where a church has dominated the ancient city since the 7th century.

As the tide ebbs exposing the shore, Steve Brooker casually tosses a 17th century trader's token he has found in the dirt into his bucket. More

My Unhealthy Diet? It Got Me This Far

By HENRY ALFORD
Published: February 28, 2011

SOMETIMES I can’t believe what my 82-year-old mother has been eating. Living now in a retirement home in Durham, N.C., she told me she recently had cherry cobbler for breakfast. Apparently she’d had French toast stuffed with bananas and Nutella for lunch the day before, and after lunch had gone to dessert theater (“You know, like dinner theater, but with desserts”), where she’d gobbled down a lot of cookies. “So when they served cherry cobbler for dessert that night in the dining room, I thought, I better take this back to my room and eat it tomorrow. For breakfast.” More

Lobster Mac and Cheese?

After a Record Haul in Maine, Try the Lobster Mac and Cheese
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: February 26, 2011

KENNEBUNKPORT, Me. — The dozens of traps that Ron Francoeur pulled from frigid waters here on Thursday held only about 30 lobsters, but maybe it did not matter. Last year’s statewide lobster haul — 93 million pounds, up from 81 million in 2009 — was the largest on record. And Mr. Francoeur allowed that he had shared in the bounty. More

Pittsburgh

Kevin Sousa, chef and owner of Salt of the Earth in Pittsburgh, finishes a plate of local legumes and farm-raised rabbit.
By KATHRYN MATTHEWS
Published: February 25, 2011

PITTSBURGH has long had an appetite for hearty Old World fare introduced by Eastern European immigrants: pirogi, cabbage rolls, kielbasa. Tourists still flock to Primanti Brothers, a landmark restaurant famous for its outsized meat-and-cheese sandwiches stuffed with French fries and coleslaw. Recently, however, Pittsburgh’s value-driven food and restaurant culture has been undergoing a transformation, with a new emphasis on what’s fresh and local. More

À la recherche

Remembrance of Flavors Past
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: February 24, 2011

When Gabrielle Hamilton was a child, growing up in Pennsylvania, her family gave an annual party that was legendary in its small town — a spring lamb roast for almost 200 people, who came from as far away as New York City: former ballet dancer friends of her mother’s and artist friends of her father’s, along with local friends and neighbors, who all gathered in the meadow behind their house to feast on lamb and asparagus vinaigrette and shortcake. In preparation Gabrielle and her sister and brothers would fill dozens of brown paper lunch bags with sand and candles and set them along the stream’s edge under the weeping willows to light everyone’s way, and juice up glow-in-the-dark Frisbees in the car headlights, so they could send those “glowing greenish discs arcing through the jet black night.” More

Recipe Redux: Evelyn Sharpe’s French Chocolate Cake, 1969

By AMANDA HESSER
Published: February 23, 2011

I began writing this column back in 2006. Remember way back then, five years ago? It was around the time of the debut of No-Knead Bread but before the dubious Bacon Explosion. The economy hadn’t yet tanked, so restaurants with stars still mattered to people without expense accounts. And we hadn’t begun to eat serious food from a truck, let alone to obsessively track a favorite vehicle or two on Twitter. More

Once a Villain, Coconut Oil Charms the Health Food World

Coconut-oil-roasted sweet potatoes; the oil enhances their caramelized flavor.
By MELISSA CLARK
Published: March 1, 2011

A FEW years ago I noticed something odd at the health food store. There, rubbing elbows with the extra-virgin olive oil and cold-pressed canola oil was virtually the last fat I expected to see in such esteemed company: coconut oil. More

Last Night's Dinner

The rice cooker got dragged in to the table, filled with Spatenbrau, and made to double as a chaffing dish for cooking beef and shrimp.

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